"The Williamsburg Avant-Garde: Experimental Music and Sound on the Brooklyn Waterfront"--by Cisco Bradley.
Really interesting history and analysis of the scene featuring Mary Halvorson, Nate Wooley, Darius Jones, Matana Roberts, Jessica Pavone, Taylor Ho Bynum, etc.
Discusses the music and influences, but also the socioeconomic changes in Brooklyn from the 90's to present day.
"And this is the chorus.....or perhaps it's a bridge...."
Still busy with a book about the history of Roland. Finally at the part about synthesizers. Have had quite some Roland products, during the years.
First synthesizer: Roland System 100 Model 101
First keyboard amp: Roland Cube
First mixer: Roland System 100
First drumcomputer: Boss DR-110
First bass-synthesizer, sequencer: Roland TB-303
Second mixer: Boss BX-8
The Hobbit and Deep Distance the Musical Life of Manuel Gottsching
'I would advise stilts for the quagmires"
Judgment at Chelmsford, a play (technically a pageant) by Charles Williams.
Cobra handling and cocaine use are a bad mix.
A crime novel that could also be in the thread about favorite music-oriented novels: Back Up by Paul Colize. The four members of a 60s British rock and roll band are all killed within 48 hours of each other in different cities in Europe. Forty years later a bum is hit by a car in Brussels and is somehow linked to the deaths of the band. References to 60s club concerts by the Who, Hendrix, and others.
Lou
Looking forward to my day in court.
Looks interesting, but alas my public library can't find the author in it's catalogue.Originally Posted by Lopez
The author is Belgian, and the book I got from my library is an English translation. Looks like the author has written quite a few books, most with titles in French.
Lou
Looking forward to my day in court.
I looked for the name of the author, so if they had something, it would turn up.
Rereading Clifford Simak's classic science fiction fix-up, City.
Cobra handling and cocaine use are a bad mix.
Read it years ago. Good stuff!
Lou
Looking forward to my day in court.
The Escape Artist – The Man Who Broke Out Of Auschwitz To Warn The World by Jonathan Freedland: True story of Rudolf Vrba who was a prisoner at Auschwitz and managed to escape with a fellow prisoner and helped to author a report in order to warn the world of what was going on in the camp. I have read several Holocaust books over the years, but this one might be one of the most compelling. Vrba’s firsthand account of the camp and how the Nazi’s systematically went about the torture, abuse, and killing of both Jews and political prisoners was at times hard to read. The book gets a little bogged down at times and probably could have been a bit shorter, but parts of it are both riveting and disturbing.
4 out of 5 stars.
Altamont, by Joel Selvin.
"And this is the chorus.....or perhaps it's a bridge...."
Just finished Revelation Space, the first of Alastair Reynolds' ultra-hard space opera series of the same name. It must be at least 17 years since I last read this - it was certainly long enough that I couldn't remember the vast majority of the plot - and it was like coming to it with fresh eyes all over again. What a great book it is, and I thoroughly enjoyed re-reading it. Now on to the second of the series, Redemption Ark, which is every bit as good.
I'm in the middle of "The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs" by Marc David Baer. It's good. Not the best written book. His style is very academic, with lots of embedded clauses that I often have to unravel. However, he's not getting too deep in the weeds and is trying to tell the larger story of the Ottomans' rise and eventual collapse, and at times focuses in on key areas of interest that give the book a lot of flavor. I knew much of this when I took an extended trip to Turkey in 2014, but this is a great refresher for things that have slipped away, plus I'm learning new things.
On the lighter side, I just finished "Youtopia" by Joesph Rein, a really interesting near future sci-fi/techno thriller novel about a technology that allows you to lead your own perfect life... at a price. It was good. Very philosophical like my favorite sci-fi author PK Dick, but there's plenty of action and mystery, too. It's book 1 of a trilogy. Book 2 will be out in the fall.
Bill
Just started "Traveling: On The Path of Joni Mitchell"-by Ann Powers.
"please do not understand me too quickly"-andre gide
Rat Pack Confidential by Shawn Levy
These were not very nice guys.
Just finished the Booker Prize winner, Kairos, the story of a 53-year-old man having an affair with a 19-year-old woman. Takes place during the dissolution of the wall and East Germany and West Germany becoming one again. Kept my attention and was well written but hard to continue into a story that you know is not likely to end well. Perhaps it was this slow moving train wreck that kept me interested.
This sounds right up my alley. I just ordered it. I have a biography of Frank Sinatra in my Kindle but have not gotten to it yet.
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